This post is for the 20 Something Bloggers’ Travel Adventures Blog Carnival.
“Six weeks in Paris? You’ve gotta go to the catacombs,” somebody said.
Oh really? I receive a lot of recommendations from people when I travel. Eat at this greasy burger joint. Check out the view from that otherwise boring building. Not that I don’t trust my fellow travelers, but there’s no accounting for taste so I decided to Google the place. I found this gem of a description on the official website:
The Catacombs gather the remainders of approximately six million Parisian, transferred between the end from 18e century and the middle from the 19e century, progressively of the closing of the cemeteries for reason of insalubrity. Along a labyrinth of obscure galleries and narrow corridors , the visitor discovers the bones laid out in a “romantico-macabre” decoration. Pillars, bells of subsidence or bath of feet of the quarrymen evoke the origin of the places, the limestone quarries, while sharpening the curiosity of the visitor. This underground museum restores the history of Parisian and invites to a voyage out of time.
Six million Parisians strewn up on the walls of a cavernous underground labrynth? Haunting reminders of long dead quarrymen? A “voyage out of time?” That’s one David Bowie short of the most perfect day this Tim Burton-loving, museum-hopping history nerd could have. Sign me up!
Before long, I was waiting in line with two friends to see the most morbid history lesson the city of lights had to offer. I chewed on some bubblemint gum, browsing a guide book as we waited in the narrow lobby. I laughed at pictures of women in 19th century gowns poised gracefully in front of stacks of bare skeletons and smoothed my own shirt as the usher finally waved for us to enter.
As I descended the 130 steps down into the ossuary, I thought about the political and ethical implications of casting the dead into such a deep pit. I pondered, casually, the difficulty those 19th century dames must have had fitting their petticoats through the narrow stairwell. Suddenly, I was wondering when I would get to the bottom of the stairwell. Had it been 130 steps yet? I had lost count at 20, but it seemed like we had been going down for so long.
The last few steps seemed to stretch forever and I found myself gasping for air when I finally reached the lobby at the bottom. More pictures of ladies and gents lined up to see their recent ancestors on display waited here, but I barely saw them. It wasn’t that difficult a descent. Why was the wind suddenly out of me?
There was no turning around, I realized. The stairs were too narrow to hand traffic back up. We followed the signs towards the ossuary itself, pausing to read the inscription at the entrance that read, in French: “Stop. This is the empire of the dead.”
At this point my head and my gut jutted violently in opposite directions. Intellectually, I was fascinated at the melodramatic declaration, comparing it to the signs in front of shoddy haunted house attractions I used to giggle through as a kid. Instinctively, I wanted to get the hell of this god forsaken despair pit and see sunlight.
What lay ahead of me were 45 minutes of low ceilings, narrow passages, and walls and walls of carefully arranged skeletal remains. The sun felt very far away, my body felt buried. My mind raced through all of the art criticism I had read, dissecting the composition of the bones that crisscrossed along the walls. I remembered the word punctum from that one class as skulls peered out from darkened nooks and crannies, sprinkled about as accents to the macabre murals. But these thoughts all rushed through like a sudden current, thrashing against the walls of my brain as it tried to ground itself while my gut rushed just as suddenly in the other direction.
The bones are so similar in shape and size to your own, my gut groaned. Similar to those of your friends, your parents. Somebody’s mother’s femur was a divider in the decorator’s adherence to the rule of thirds. His brother’s fingers textured the trim. The flavor seemed sucked out of my gum. My tongue was so dry.
I began to sweat as my gut and brain continued to bicker. Look at the dichotomy of reverie and arrogance all this represents as the designers tried to both honor the dead and flaunt their own skills, my brain marveled.
WE’RE ALL GOING TO FUCKING DIE! my gut yelled back.
My friends glanced back at me as I trailed a few feet behind, hoping that nobody was noticing the internal fistfight my psyche was having with itself.
“You ok?” they asked.
“It’s a little cramped in here,” I stammered back.
